Uncomfortable: A 'Ship Happens' Redux
by emcey squared
Summary: Pre-Jack/AI!OrganicComputer!Nate: Jack would have been less surprised to see Kim Yamazaki walk off the spaceship than the person he actually saw.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer – I own nothing contained with this story.

Teaser – Jack would have been less surprised to see Kim Yamazaki walk off the spaceship than the person he actually saw. As everyone milled around him and shouted at one another, all Jack could do was stare at the body collapsed in the ship's 'door' mechanism in shock.

Pairings – pre-Jack/AI!OrganicComputer!Nate

A/N – I hated the way the writers handled the Kim situation. She was a weak personality in _Ship Happens_, but I had assumed that was because they were going to let her grow and explore the concepts of humanity and the definition of what makes a person unique. Instead they copped out in the next episode and killed her off. It was like they didn't know what to do with her once she showed up so they scrapped what had the potential to be a truly amazing storyline. Kim could have done so much... and now we'll never know. Well, I'm going to redux the next episode and make it a sequel to this one, only I'm going to fix the mistake of killing off the organic computer-person and have my Nate live.

Please enjoy.

_**Uncomfortable: A 'Ship Happens' Redux**_

_Chapter One – In Which Nathan Stark is Technically Still Dead_

Jack was fairly certain he should have asked Tess to watch the meteor shower with him, but it hadn't felt right. Not that this was the first time Jack had purposely overlooked an opportunity to go out with someone lately. It wasn't like he was biding his time and waiting for Allison. He still loved her, but his feelings had been muted by time, friendship, and the fact that she wasn't really what he was looking for anymore.

The truth was, Jack had felt as though he'd been in a holding pattern since Nathan Stark had died. It had been Stark's wedding day to Allison and the day had been put in a loop because a scientist who didn't want to be fired tried to prove his experiment worked and was useful. Though Jack had actually kissed Allison in one of the loops, he dreamed sometimes that he'd kissed Nathan instead.

He never said anything about those dreams and, when Allison announced she was pregnant with Nathan's baby, Jack was glad he hadn't. They were likely his subconscious' way of telling him he wished that there'd been a way to stop the loops without losing Stark, but he doubted anyone else would interpret his dreams that way and there was no way Jack wanted Allison to think that he'd been secretly lusting after Nathan all the times he'd told her that remarrying Nathan might not be such a good idea.

Not that Nathan hadn't been handsome enough to lust over. Jack was comfortable enough with himself that he had never felt the need to deny that he was bi and, after his marriage with Abby was over, he'd told Zoe. (Albeit, the conversation with Zoe had been rather awkward and he'd wound up relating one of his college romances with a chemistry major, but he'd never felt the need to hide that part of himself from his daughter.) So there had been a few times when Jack had found himself distracted by how sexy Stark had been. Nathan's personality hadn't really been all that bad either; Jack had grown to respect Stark and consider him a friend. What had stopped Jack from being more than attracted to Stark was the fact that the man simply wouldn't, or couldn't, let Jack in as more than a 'frienemy'.

Yet despite all of that, Jack had simply shut down some part of himself when Stark died and no amount of introspection could lead him to understand _what_ or _why_.

Henry's spaceship was making noises.

"Hey! Do you hear that?" Jack yelled, turning to where Henry and Allison sat at the computer stations a few yards away.

"What?" Henry asked as he stood up.

"The..." what was its name again? "It's making noise." The Columbus... now he remembered.

Denial flickered across Henry's face. "Jack, I told you, it's powered down." As if in defiance, the noise from the ship grew louder.

"A protocol has been initiated to open the door," Tess countered, looking worried.

"Initiated? From where?" Allison had moved to stand beside Tess, who laced one of her gloved hands with Allison's encouragingly.

"From there," Tess gestured at the ship with her free hand as a circular panel began opening on the underside of the ship.

"Okay, I need security here right now!" Allison's command snapped the GD guards out of their stunned staring at the ship and into action. They raced forward to form a protective barrier between the ship and the onlookers.

Once the hatch fully opened, a pod-like structure dropped down from the ship and opened up to reveal a human figure concealed in a white fog. The person, clearly a man, collapsed on the ground. Allison told the guards to stand down as Henry investigated the person, but Jack knew who it was before Henry announced the name.

Jack would have been less surprised to see Kim walk off the spaceship than the person he actually saw. As everyone milled around him and shouted at one another, all Jack could do was stare at the body collapsed in the ship's 'door' mechanism in shock.

Nathan Stark... was alive?

-=-=-=

Allison was determinedly looking anywhere but Nathan's doppelganger. "Well, he is dehydrated and his electrolyte count is down... probably the result of plasma field exposure after landing. Otherwise, he's fine."

"Henry, you said this was an unmanned mission, right?" Tess interjected, staring at Henry even as she stayed glued to Allison's side in support.

"Absolutely, yeah..." Henry's eyes were glued to the figure on the other side of the glass.

"But the DNA matches Nathan Stark." Tess glanced over and bit her lip as a sad expression entered her eyes.

"Nathan's dead," Allison muttered resolutely.

"Besides, twenty years ago, Stark would have been in college, right?" Jack added.

"He was my intern on this project." Henry shrugged. "I did the bulk of the work with Kim, but Nathan was my most promising student, so I included him on some of the work to see how he'd do in a top-secret work environment."

"His cellular structure isn't human," Allison's voice returned to her 'work' tone. "That's not Nathan."

"Okay, then... what's going on?" Jack asked. He looked over at the pseudo-Nathan and, for a moment, his blue eyes met Nathan's green ones. What was it that made someone a person, anyway?

"Well, look... that ship has been traveling through deep space for twenty years. That's twenty years of cosmic rays and primordial particle radiation. Who knows what could have happened?" Tess sounded excited at the idea, but was clearly trying to clamp down on her enthusiasm for Allison's sake.

"The biological mainframe..." Henry sounded tired. "It should be able to tell us what occurred on the trip."

"What's an..." Jack started to ask about the biological mainframe, but Allison jumped in with an explanation.

"It's an organic computer, based on neural net architecture, like the human brain. Instead of circuits and wires, it can process information using living cells. It can modify its structure to solve any problem its presented."

"Great." Jack tried to keep the annoyance out of his voice. Really, there had to be a catalogue somewhere in the town that kept track of all these things. If he could just look through it, maybe he wouldn't always feel so behind on every subject. "How long to, uh, boot it up?"

"Yeah," Zane finally spoke up from where he'd been standing, staring at Stark through the glass. "You might want to go to plan B. I tapped into the ship using my own organic rig, and the on-board computer is completely fried. There's nothing left."

"I'm what's left." For the first time, Nathan spoke. His voice was the same as Jack remembered. The words 'see you around, Jack' playing cruelly in the back of his mind all these months had ensured that Jack remembered clearly the combination of rough and smooth that made up Nathan's voice.

Allison flinched as she turned around to face Nathan.

"I'm what's left," Nathan repeated.

Shaking, Allison fled the room, Tess on her heels.

Jack took a few steps forward, confident that Nathan was listening to them since he'd already answered a question for them. "The..." he was going to say real, but then wondered just what it was that made one person more 'real' than the next. "The original Nathan Stark died a few months ago. His death was hard on her."

"They were... close?" Nathan guessed. Then his eyes narrowed and he tried again before anyone could correct him. "They were married. She's pregnant. The baby is his, isn't it?"

"That's correct," Henry answered.

Nathan let out a frustrated sigh and ran a hand through his hair, a startlingly familiar gesture. "The mainframe should have used the other DNA. There was a skin cell from Kim Yamazaki that was also viable for use. Her presence would have been less painful..."

"Kim is dead, too," Jack interrupted. "If the choices were just Stark and her, then there was really no way to avoid causing someone pain."

"I was looking forward to meeting my creators," Nathan muttered softly, his eyes shutting briefly.

"Well, you've still got me," Henry responded, giving Nathan a smile.

"That is true, Dr. Deacon."

"Please, call me Henry."

Nathan tilted his head to the side curiously. "Very well, Henry. But... what am I to be called? I am not Nathan Stark and..."

"You'd like a name of your own," Jack filled in. "You don't want to be seen as taking a dead man's place."

"Precisely."

Henry shook his head. "I... I don't know. I've never been very good at picking names."

"Um... how about Justin?" Zane asked. "That was the name of one of my best friends as a kid."

But Nathan was already shaking his head negatively.

"George? Robert? Harry? Fred?" Zane kept listing out names and Nathan kept vetoing. "Just agree on one already. Do you have to be so picky?"

"This is the name I'll be going by for the rest of my life. I would prefer it to be something significant to me and not something random or arbitrary." Nathan rolled his eyes at Zane, as though the younger scientist should have already realized this.

"Nate." Jack held up his hand before Nathan could agree or disagree. "It's a nickname for Nathan and Stark never went by nicknames. The name would be easy for people who knew Stark to remember and associate with you, but would still reinforce the fact that you aren't him, at least subtly anyway."

Zane pouted, though he looked a little impressed by Jack's reasoning. Henry nodded in agreement, a smile on his face as he observed, "Nathan hated it when anyone called him Nate, but I think he'd appreciate the irony if you were to choose to go by it."

"I like it," Nate said, making it clear that was his name now. "I know Henry's name, but what are yours?"

"I'm Zane Donovan," Zane chirped, bouncing a little in excitement at seeing just how human Nate really was. Though created by a computer and not normal by any standards, Nate was still curious to learn and establish himself as a unique individual.

"I'm Jack Carter, the town Sheriff." Jack gave them all a wave and stepped back a little towards the exit. "I'm going to check on Allison and then head over to the office. All of the appliances used in the plasma whatever have been gather there and Jo and I have the unpleasant duty of returning it all."

"Sheriff." Nate's voice gave Jack a pause. "Thanks... for my name."

"No problem." Grinning at Henry and Zane, he added, "I'll be back later to pester you all on how everything's going." Turning to the door, Jack took a few steps and was almost out of the room when something made his face grow pale and his footsteps falter a moment.

"I guess I'll see you around, Jack..."

A/N - I know, I'm mean to poor Jack. Muahahaha...

See ya next update.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer – I own nothing contained within this story.

Teaser – Jack would have been less surprised to see Kim walk off the spaceship than the person he actually saw. As everyone milled around him and shouted at one another, all Jack could do was stare at the body collapsed in the ship's 'door' mechanism in shock.

Pairings – pre-Jack/AI!OrganicComputer!Nate

_Chapter Two – In Which Nate Ponders the Meaning of Life, Humanity, and Boredom_

There was something about the town Eureka that was odd. Nate wasn't certain what it was, since he had no frame of reference from which to work with, but he knew instinctively that it was an unusual little town. There seemed to be an inordinate number of pretty people, for starters. At least... Nate thought they were pretty. They seemed aesthetically pleasing to his eyes, anyway.

There was Dr. Allison Blake, for starters. She was very pretty and pregnancy suited her very much. Nate rather thought she 'glowed'. Unfortunately, she'd apparently been married to the original Nathan Stark and was thus reluctant to have anything to do with Nate. He was okay with this, though. Since he was not Nathan Stark, Nate didn't want her to grow attached to him as a 'Nathan-replacement' and never see him as his own person.

Nate was fairly certain that if he had any future dealings with her, he would have to ignore any attraction there might be – assuming that he would feel the same attractions as Nathan – and maintain friendly relations with her so that she could see him as Nate and not Nathan.

Zane was attractive too, but he made Nate think of a particularly old child. Henry was also a handsome man, though Nate felt like Henry was his 'father'. Tess Fontana, the blonde woman who had tried to comfort Allison, was a beautiful woman; Nate just wasn't certain if she saw him as a person and not a computer.

Not that she'd be wrong to see him that way. Nate was a computer. He'd been built by a computer to replace that computer and fulfill its missions. Now that he had accomplished his first mission - rove the galaxy in search of data and then return home - he had a new mission: download all of the data stored within him before his memory banks failed from old age.

So, really, Nate felt that he ought to keep up the writing on the walls and marker boards the scientists, under Tess' orders, had brought him. He needed to write as much as he could as fast as he could because all the data inside him would take more years than he had to write it out like this.

Maybe someone would give him a tablet computer and he could use that instead. It would certainly work better for him.

As Nate made a little graphic doodle to emphasize one of his equations, his mind began to wander again.

It wasn't so much the various attractive people that had his mind on this subject as it was one attractive person in particular. Jack Carter... Nate wasn't sure what it was that drew him to Carter, but already he could tell that the Sheriff wasn't just a pretty face... and damn was he pretty in that uniform. Carter had hidden depths. Nate was sure of it. Carter likely had little or no scientific background, but he was sharp and reasonably logical.

Nate wasn't entirely certain, but he rather thought that the idea of getting to know Jack Carter better was exciting. Well, he thought it was excitement that made his chest feel somewhat fluttery-ish. It wasn't as though he had past experience to tell him exactly what it was he felt now.

The idea of getting to know Carter better was irrelevant, though. Nate wasn't here to squander his time on frivolous things like friendships and feelings. He was here to download data...

Except he'd already covered an entire wall in information, his hand hurt, his mind kept wandering, and he was sooooo bored. There was also a good chance that his marker was starting to run low on ink. Clearly a new marker had not been broken out of the box just for him. Either that or his marker was defective...

And why did he have the strange urge to write the number 42 on the window to the observation lounge?

-=-=-=

Three walls were now covered in scribblings, Nate's handwriting was starting to suffer, and he was now fighting the intense need to doodle something on the helmets of one of the scientists in the blue hazmat suits.

Meeting new people was obviously having a detrimental effect on his ability to concentrate. He should have had four walls and a marker board covered by now and was thus quite behind. Nate had recalculated his download speed every time he realized he was falling further behind and wound up extending his initial estimates by a month already.

Henry and Zane had returned to the observation lounge, though, so Nate set aside his marker (it was a new one because the first marker had given up in the middle of decorating the second wall) and walked up to talk to them. Tess was there, too, but Nate wasn't exactly thrilled by that. She kept calling him Nathan even though he'd insisted, several times, that she should call him Nate because Nate, and not Nathan, was his name.

Nate wasn't entirely certain that Tess was the brightest scientist in her field. In fact, he couldn't be sure she actually had a field beyond talking a lot. Could somebody actually get a PhD in babbling?

"Why were you created?" Tess asked.

"There was a malfunction in the primary machine."

"Primary machine... you mean the original organic computer?" Henry clarified.

"Yes." Nate walked over and grabbed his chair, dragged it closer to the window, and took a seat. This looked like it was going to be a long question and answer session and he wanted to be comfortable for it. "The primary machine was experiencing voltage irregularities and was unable to continue its mission. It created a replacement – me – so that its mission could still be fulfilled. Once it was offline, I became the primary machine."

"How were you created, though?" Zane asked. "Obviously you were grown, but from what?"

"Though the primary machine was created in a clean room, no clean room is perfect." Nate smirked as understanding dawned on Henry's face.

"We took level one precautions, but no environment can ever be kept completely sterile," Henry agreed. "Obviously something got through."

"A few strands of hair," Tess postulated, "or an eyelash..."

"Skin cells," Nate interrupted. He didn't really want Tess to get started listing sweat or tears or whatever. "There were two from Nathan Stark and one from Kim Yamazaki. Because there was more genetic material from Stark, he was the logical choice. It was fortunate that there was also a detailed profile on Stark available due to his involvement, minor though it may have been, on the project."

"Is that really possible?" Tess asked, looking at Henry.

Nate had to bite back the urge to roll his eyes and say that if it wasn't possible then he wouldn't be standing there. He felt he was starting to develop a great dislike of stupid questions.

Something must have shown on Nate's face, though, because Henry's expression as he watched Nate grew amused as he answered. "The computer was programmed with self-preservation: to keep itself operating under any circumstances."

"So... it found a few flakes of skin and created a whole other Nathan?"

"Nate, not Nathan," Zane corrected absently. Despite being somewhat childish, there was something distinctly likeable about Zane.

Tess rolled her eyes and watched Henry for an answer.

"Well, it evolved," Henry shrugged, "adapted... it made an incredible leap."

"But why did it model Stark and not someone else who worked on the ship... like you?"

"I thought that would be obvious," Nate interrupted. "It only had viable genetic data from Stark and Yamazaki. There was more genetic material from Stark, so it created me. I already told you that; I was simply less direct then."

Henry's amused smile was fond now. "You may not be Nathan, but you've certainly inherited his dislike for repeating himself."

"Repeating myself is redundant and wastes time. Why would anyone like repeating themselves?"

Zane snickered as Tess flushed in embarrassment. "He's got a point," Zane teased.

The door in the observation lounge opened and a man, slightly shorter than Zane and with the same skin tone, peeked in. His hair was brown and a pair of square, black glasses sat in front of his brown eyes. "Uh, can I come in?"

"Sure, Fargo." Henry waved the young scientist into the lounge. "Fargo, this is Nate. Nate, this is Dr. Douglass Fargo. He was something of a protege to Dr. Stark."

Fargo blushed and babbled out a denial. "N-not really. I'm such a klutz that I'm surprised he put up with me and my hero-worship and... well, never mind. I guess I just wanted to, you know, at least get to see you. I was there when he died and..." Fargo blushed again and a sad expression appeared in his eyes. Zane patted Fargo on the shoulder in a brotherly sort of fashion, which seemed to help Fargo lose a little of the sadness.

Nate didn't know what to say. No one had really told him anything about what the original Stark was like. All he had was the personality profile from the primary computer's memory, which was twenty years out of date. Yet here was someone who knew Dr. Stark, had worked for him and with him, and had been there when he died.

"What was the last thing he said to you?" Nate asked, hoping that this was the right track to take.

"Um... he was making certain I knew what to do on my end... oh, when I volunteered to take his place, he told me that he always knew I had it in me." Fargo smiled a little in pride at the memory. "I just... I'm not sure what 'it' is."

"Whatever Stark was doing was obviously dangerous, right?" Nate asked, receiving an affirmative nod.

"I... I think he knew before he got into the chamber that he was going to die..."

"He knew that you were willing to step up to the challenge regardless of the consequences because it had to be done." Nate shrugged. "That's what 'it' was."

A smile lit up Fargo's face and Nate knew he'd said the right thing. "I guess I needed to hear that," Fargo said. "Thanks." He walked up to the glass. "I needed to see for myself that you aren't him... and you're not. But... I think Dr. Stark would have liked you." Then Fargo hurried out of the room.

The observation lounge had gone deathly silent at what had just transpired and Nate wasn't really certain what to do next. So he picked up his marker and wrote a number on the window. It wasn't 42, though that temptation was still there. The number was 2000135 y, 69 d: y for years and d for days. "If I'm stuck using a marker to download all my data, that's how long its going to take. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm not gonna last that long. So, while I go back to doodling, how about you all figure out how to start reading the data stored in me in a faster, more convenient way?"

Henry laughed again, but Nate couldn't figure out why. He hadn't done anything amusing. At least... Nate didn't think he had.

Humans were strange, strange people.

A/N - I really enjoyed writing Nate. I made him sort of like Stark in some ways, but more... innocent - naive - in others. I hope you all like him enough not to mind that, technically, he isn't really Nathan...


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer – I own nothing contained with this story.

Teaser – Jack would have been less surprised to see Kim walk off the spaceship than the person he actually saw. As everyone milled around him and shouted at one another, all Jack could do was stare at the body collapsed in the ship's 'door' mechanism in shock.

Pairings – pre-Jack/AI!OrganicComputer!Nate

A/N - The second scene of this chapter makes me nervous. I don't want to change it - I can't without significantly altering a great deal of the fic. It was spawned from the fact that Allison seems to always be at work now and, despite having all of Season Two revolve around saving Kevin, Allison hasn't been seen with her son since the start of Season Three. I think I might have noticed him in 'I Do, Over', but that's about it. Also, I never bought the idea that Allison got over losing Nathan so easily. This is the second time that a man she's loved has died, leaving her to deal with being pregnant and grieving. That's bad enough to deal with once... but twice? Anyway, Jack isn't trying to be mean in that scene; he's trying to help. Sometimes you've got to use tough love on someone.

Besides, Kit said it was great and she mentioned having a second opinion on it who agreed, so I'll try to stop worrying now.

_Chapter Three – In Which Blenders, Boost Converters, and Death are Dealt Out_

Allison was a sneaky, crafty, manipulative little pregnant woman.

Not that Jack could exactly blame her for foisting the job of returning the junk to its rightful owners. She was waddling when she walked and likely her feet hurt from everyday activity. It was just... couldn't she have made Fargo and Larry do this instead of him and Jo?

"Are we done yet?" Jo groaned, leaning back on the stairs.

"We're in the home stretch," Jack responded, ignoring the way the steps were pressing against his back.

"I don't want to see another toaster again."

"I never want to _eat_ toast again." Jo giggled while Jack reached over and set the blender – he was fairly certain that it was Allison's blender – down on the steps where he sat. "But we are going to have to take another inventory," he added.

"Ugh..." Jo gave him a pleading look that Jack just knew she'd learned from Zoe. "Maybe in another few minutes?"

"Okay." Jack didn't want to fight her suggest. In fact, he really wanted to call it a day and go home to be pestered by SARAH about the spaceship. He'd called her once, to tell her that the ship had landed and that he'd fill her in more once he got home from work, but that had been hours ago before Nate had exited the ship and turned the world upside down.

"There's just so much stuff," Jo complained, hopping to her feet and looking around in annoyance, "like so many whack-jobs..."

"Haha," Fargo said, sounding very un-amused as he walked up. "Very funny."

"What do you want, Fargo?" Jo asked, her voice bordering on whining. "We already gave you back your thingy."

"This is not my thingy," Fargo insisted, shaking the boost converter in his hand. "This has a ZX-21 chip."

Jack reluctantly stood up and went to stand beside Jo. "I don't want to know about this stuff," he said before Jo could. He figured that if she got to whine at Fargo then so did he.

"My boost converter has a ZY-21 chip," Fargo plowed on, ignoring Jack's complaint completely. "This is clearly inferior. You pulled the old bait and switch."

"Fargo, look around. There's not much left." Jo was clearly hopeful that Fargo would find his boost converter and scram.

The collection of computer circuits that Fargo was waving around, however, triggered a memory of a particularly condescending doctor who'd also been in search of a boost converter. "You know, we did give out something that looked like this earlier today," Jack took the converter from Fargo and took a better look at it.

"To who?"

"Um... oh, god..." Jack grasped at the name. Doctor Lieven... Liever... Lievem...

"Lieber," Fargo growled.

"Yeah," Jack glanced at Jo for confirmation and she nodded slowly as she, too, remembered the pompous twerp. "Yeah, that's the guy."

"He's been eying my converter for months."

Now didn't that sound wrong? "Easy, Fargo. It was absolutely crazy earlier. It could have been an honest mistake." Jack handed back the converter.

"There is nothing honest about Tom Lieber." Fargo dropped the converter on the table with a thump. "I'm gonna get back what's mine," he growled before stomping off.

Seth, Larry, Lieber... how did Fargo manage to be at odds with so many crazy people? Jack missed the days when Spencer had been in town. Henry's old assistant had gotten into a lot of trouble but, ironically, Spencer had always managed to keep Fargo out of trouble... excepting, of course, the one incident when Spencer managed to accidentally brainwash himself, Fargo, Vince, Taggart, and Jo. When Spencer's funding was up, though, the kid left the town in order to get another degree at MIT.

"Have a nice day," Jo called after Fargo, who waved and sort of grunted in return.

Then Fargo sort of paused and, sheepishly, turned back around. "Uh, wait. I completely forgot, what with Lieber being a thieving jerk and all... I, uh, went to see Dr. Stark's double... uh, Nate. He said his name was Nate."

Jack grinned. "How's he doing?"

"Good. He seems... nice. Well, he was nice to me. It's kind of... eerie, seeing him and having to remember that he isn't Dr. Stark."

"I can't even begin to imagine how Dr. Blake is handling this," Jo added. "It's got to be pretty hard on her."

"Well, she's got a lot of friends looking out for her," Jack said confidently. "We'll all help her through this, right? What I'm wondering is how this is going to get explained to Kevin."

Fargo and Jo winced. How to explain this to Kevin indeed...

=-=-=-

Zane was like a kid in a candy store with his organic computer. In fact, Zane had a childlike curiosity about most any science he came in contact with. It was one of the reasons Jack had initially approved of Zane's intention to date Jo. Jo needed what Zane had in her life and it was clear that Zane had feelings for her from the get go.

"That's not my blender."

Allison, on the other hand, was not childlike at all. She'd lost a lot of things over the past few years and the vibrant, fun woman Jack had met on the broken RV, the woman who'd unveiled the first secrets of GD to him, was gone. If she was still vibrant and fun, but then she was being so less and less around Jack. There was a distance between them. Sometimes Jack wondered if she blamed him for Nathan's death.

Sometimes he wondered if she ought to.

"It looks just like the picture on the box you showed me," Jack objected. "If it isn't the same one, then its the same model. There shouldn't be any difference." Her jaw tightened as she visibly flinched, causing Jack to think over what he said. "People aren't blenders, Allison."

Zane, who'd been so excitedly explaining how he knew the computer mainframe had indeed made Nate, grabbed Tess and started dragging her out of the room. "We'll just go see how Henry's doing while Mommy and Daddy argue this out," he told Tess firmly, if somewhat sarcastically.

Tess started to argue, but the door shut on her comments.

"Of course people aren't blenders." Allison wasn't looking at Jack, though. "People are people and blenders are blenders... computers are computers. That's how the world works."

"Nate isn't just a computer, either." When Jack finally received a sharp look for that, his eyes narrowed. "Don't kid yourself, Allison. At the heart of what's bothering you, making you complain about a blender of all things, is that Nate is here and Nathan isn't and that, much like identical twins, looking like Stark doesn't make Nate him."

"Nate, as you so quaintly call him, is a computer, Jack. He's like SARAH, an AI. He might seem real and act real, but everything about him is a program. He's algorithms and code; everything's fake."

"Maybe it is a good thing Stark isn't here to hear you say that," Jack snapped, more harsh than he intended. "He never believed that AIs were less than people. God, Allison... he saw Callister as his own son. Now here you are, the woman who loved him, and your treating his look-alike as less than human because Nate was artificially created? Because he's an organic computer?

"Well here's a newsflash for you, Allison. We're all 'organic computers'. But then, you're a genius and you already know that. So, really, its an excuse that you're using because you don't want to admit the truth. The reason you've been avoiding him and, as Zane put it when I got here before you, referring to him the way Fargo would a poorly designed upgrade is because you're angry. You're angry at Nathan for dying and Nate for not being him. You can't keep this up, Allison."

Jack sighed and shook his head. "You barely spend any time with Kevin anymore. You've been throwing yourself into your work. The only reason you've been taking good care of yourself is because you're pregnant."

"Nathan should be here, not that... that mockery of him," Allison burst out, tears running down her face as, for the first time since Jack brought her the news of Nathan's death, she began to cry.

Walking over to Allison, Jack pulled her close. "I'm sorry for what I had to say, but Allison... you haven't been grieving. All this time, you've been the tough girl, but what we need is for you to be you. Nathan did what he did because he loved you, because he wanted you to live and find happiness again. He wouldn't have wanted you to push Kevin away or block out your own emotions the way you have been. Somethings got to give, Allison."

"I...I'm going to take the next week or so off," Allison said tearfully, her face buried against Jack's shoulder. "I'll leave Henry in charge. I..." She pulled away, a horrified expression on her face. "I've barely seen Kevin all week. Oh, god, Jack... I've barely seen my son..."

"Go home now, Allison," Jack said firmly, his hands on her shoulders. "Get Kevin out of school early and just go home. I'll tell Henry, okay."

Sniffling, Allison nodded. "I'm gonna take a little while to get myself back together and then I'll go. I just... I need a few minutes..." Nodding understandingly, Jack walked towards the door. "What's Nate like, Jack? What's he really like?"

Despite the fact that Jack had barely seen more of Nate than Allison, he felt that he had a good answer for her. "He's curious and determined. Nate is his own person; he's just not sure who that person is, yet."

-=-=-=

Jack picked up the boost converter as he got out of Jo's car. They'd finally arrived at Lieber's house in order to swap out the converter for Fargo... assuming the trouble prone scientist hadn't arrived there first.

"If Lieber says that that boost converter isn't his, I say we let him and Fargo settle it in a cage match," Jo declared.

Grinning at the idea, Jack nodded. "I'd put five bucks on Fargo."

"Nice."

"He's scrappy." Jack rapped his fist against the glass door in front of the real door, which was open. "Dr. Lieber?" There was no response, so he pulled open the door and took a look inside. Jo followed him into the front hall, which was dark. There were flickering lights only just visible ahead and the smell of something burnt reached Jack's nose. "Dr. Lieber!"

There was still no answer, but Jack didn't want to take that as a bad sign yet. "We've got your... uh... boost converter." Thinking that Lieber might be just around the corner, Jack held up the converter for emphasis. Still, Lieber did not respond.

"This looks more like a haunted house than a physics lab," Jo observed, sounding irritated.

Ignoring the comment, Jack called for Dr. Lieber again and the flipped the light switch, only to be visibly zapped with electricity for his trouble. The smell was getting worse now, so Jack asked if Jo could smell it too.

"It's smells like something's burning," Jo agreed.

Turning the corner into the lab area, Jack rushed over to the computer chair and twirled the chair so that it was facing them. Seated in the chair and gracing them with a charred, skeletal grin, Dr. Lieber's corpse was still giving off smoke.

"Or someone..." Jack pulled out his cell as he and Jo backed out of the lab and backtracked to the front porch. Hitting the speed dial for Henry, Jack brought the phone to his ear.

Henry picked up on the second ring. "Hey Jack."

"Henry. Jo and I went to Dr. Lieber's house to return his boost converter, but he's been electrocuted. He's dead, Henry."

=-=-=-

Fargo had taken back what was his... the boost converter, to be specific. Unfortunately, doing so may have killed Lieber. The kid was going to freak out, Jack could just feel it. Though... there was something about the scenario that didn't feel right.

Surely Lieber would have had power breakers on his equipment that would have shut the system down in the event of an electrical surge.

But there were problems other than Fargo to deal with right now. "Henry, did Allison leave GD before you came down here?"

"No. I was with her when I got the call from you about Lieber. She was just about to walk out the door, but hearing about Lieber's death turned her right around. She said that, as Director of GD, she should be the one to deal with alerting Lieber's next of kin." Henry shook his head. "I tried to convince her to let me handle everything, but she... you were right when you said she wasn't dealing with her grief. I wanted to think it was just the signal and the possibility of aliens that was driving her, but now that Nate is here, it's obvious that she never completely dealt with Nathan's death."

"She came back to work too soon." Jack shrugged. "She told me that she needed to stay busy, but she just wound up using work as a way to escape from the rest of her life."

"It's hard to loose someone you love, Jack. When Kim died... I became obsessed with discovering why it happened. I was so obsessed that Nathan wasn't certain he could trust me to help him and Allison save Kevin. Once I realized how I was affecting others I tried to fix things and... wound up in a high-security prison." Henry shrugged. "Grief does strange things to people."

"I know. When I was in High School, I was in a car accident with the girl I'd been dating. She died and I let the officers assume I'd been driving..." Jack could still remember, vividly, the way the car had flown off the road. "I was a wreck after that and even now I send flowers to her grave on the anniversary of her birthday."

"That's why you were so very reluctant to let Zoe learn how to drive," Henry observed. "It did seem to be more than the normal parental reaction."

"Yeah..." Jack brought the topic back to Allison. "What Allison's doing, though, isn't healthy and she's really hurting Kevin."

"I'll see what I can do to get her to actually take time off and not just say she will," Henry declared. "If she won't do it voluntarily, I'll threaten her with medical leave."

"Good."

"So... how are you handling the Nate situation. You and Fargo were the last people to see Nathan alive. I know how Fargo's doing, but you're pretty talented at bottling things up." Henry eyed Jack worriedly.

Jack snorted in amusement at Henry's observation and shrugged. "I don't know, really. I'm not sure it's completely sunk in yet. It was kind of creepy though, when I was leaving the observation lounge. What he said... was pretty damn close to Nathan's last words. Mostly, I guess I'm too busy worrying about how Allison is taking this to consider how I am.

"When I got her to decide, if only briefly, to take the day off, I said a lot of things that were more... tactless than I usually try for. I was hoping to shock her into seeing what she was doing, and it seemed to have worked, but..."

"But then work reared its ugly head and she retreated behind the position of Director of Operations again," Henry filled in. "Just try to let me worry about her for a little while. You sort yourself out, okay?"

"Yeah," Jack breathed out a sigh of relief. Slowly a smile appeared on his face as he felt like a weight was lifting off his shoulders. This was what best friends were for. "How about you? You were friends with Nathan for a long time. How are you holding up?"

"Once I got over the initial shock of seeing Nate, I think I've been doing pretty well. Nate is a lot like Nathan in some ways and in others... he's quite unique." Henry smiled, though his eyes grew a tad distant. "I keep thinking that Nathan would have been utterly fascinated by all of this. Probably honored, too."

"Just imagine how much of a boost his ego would have taken," Jack joked.

Laughing, Henry waved Jack off. "I'm going to investigate a little further here, to see what caused the electrical surge. You should take Jo and let Fargo know what's going on."

A/N - So... was it okay?


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer – I own nothing contained with this story.

Teaser – Jack would have been less surprised to see Kim walk off the spaceship than the person he actually saw. As everyone milled around him and shouted at one another, all Jack could do was stare at the body collapsed in the ship's 'door' mechanism in shock.

Pairings – pre-Jack/AI!OrganicComputer!Nate

_Chapter Four – In Which Things Go Terribly Wrong_

Looking over the setup, which was pretty advanced, Nate felt better about the procedure Zane wanted to try. Not that Nate didn't intend to give the scientist a difficult time about it anyway. There were still risks involved and he wanted to make sure he didn't wind up comatose with half his data corrupted.

"An SDS scan isn't advanced enough to decode my amino acid constructs," Nate warned as he watched Zane wander around.

"I tweaked the polarity, so I'm hoping we've got a shot."

"Yeah, well just don't fry my neural pathways. I don't exactly have a method of backing up my data."

"Come on, trust me." Zane attached a sensor to Nate's left temple. "I'm one of the smart ones."

"It's not you that I doubt," Nate responded. "It's the equipment." The monitor looked slightly fuzzy to his eyes, but Nate knew that it wasn't fuzzy enough to be noticed by human eyes yet. If he pointed it out, Zane would just assume he was nervous and looking for excuses to postpone the procedure.

Zane looked pleased with Nate's words, though it hadn't been intended as a compliment. Nate had simply meant that he thought Dr. Blake would assign only the best and the brightest to work on retrieving the data from him. She certainly wouldn't want some moron screwing up the data inside him.

"I'll start it on the lowest setting possible," Zane reassured Nate as he put the second sensor on Nate's right temple. "And it'll be switched off at the first sign of trouble, okay?"

"Sounds fine to me," Nate agreed, finally relaxing. Zane knew what he was doing.

In the observation lounge, Henry, Tess, Jack, and Allison were gathered. Nate's ears could hear better than a human's, so he could overhear parts of the conversation between Jack and Allison. Jack sounded strained as he talked to her about the death of some Doctor named Lieber, who'd apparently electrocuted himself from the inside out. Dr. Blake was avoiding looking directly at the Sheriff, who was giving her a look somewhere in between what Nate thought was worry and irritation.

"Initiating the SDS scan." Zane's voice brought Nate's attention back to more immediate concerns. As soon as the scan began, the monitors started flashing with static as the SDS scanner went haywire. One of LED readouts even displayed the word "HELP". "That was a neural spike," Zane said, turning to Nate.

"It's not from me," Nate denied. "Shut it off. Something must be malfunctioning."

The scanner sparked again and Zane rushed over to one of the control panels. "What are you doing? You're creating a feedback loop."

"I'm not doing anything!" Nate snapped. "I'm telling you, that thing must be malfunctioning somehow."

"I'm shutting it off now," Zane finally said, reaching for the proper switch. Only his hand never reached it. His body tensed up and started jerking, as though he were experiencing a seizure, while he made a sound that Nate had never heard before, but would now always associate with sudden pain.

Nate stood up from his chair, oblivious to the sounds of scientists milling around in the lab and the observation lounge in an effort to discontinue the SDS scan. He didn't know what was causing this... problem with Zane, but it wasn't the scanner. He reached out, catching Zane when the young man collapsed, and tried to figure out how to dissipate the voltage – to ground Zane – before he wound up like the Dr. Lieber that Dr. Blake and Sheriff Carter had been discussing.

How to ground him, though... the voltage had to go somewhere... something conductive enough to withstand the energy, but neutral...

Why wasn't there anything useful in the lab?! Markers and markerboards and chemicals that couldn't be used to create anything harmful and a fried SDS scanner... there was everything except something useful.

"Zane, just hold on." With a start, Nate realized he was talking to Zane. He didn't know if the man could hear him through the buzz of the visible electricity that was coursing through his body, but Nate couldn't do anything else. "Help's coming; just hold on..."

_Please don't die..._

-=-=-=

The remaining scientists – two in blue hazmat suits – watched Nate warily as he paced in front of the observation lounge window. He couldn't concentrate on downloading further data. Nate needed to know how Zane was doing. No one had called in the last hour to let him know whether the young man was even alive.

Nate kept turning the events over and over in his mind, trying to figure out what happened.

The SDS scanner started working and, for a fraction of a second, Nate had felt it begin analyzing one of the cells that contained gravimetric data. But the scanner hadn't had enough time to do more than take a tentative look before some form of outside interference began draining its power and pumping out enough electromagnetic interference that the monitors began to short out. Nate knew that he hadn't done anything and Zane was clearly the source of the voltage irregularities, considering that he was the one who'd been enveloped by the electricity.

Except why had Zane had such an unusual seizure? Though Dr. Lieber, whoever that had been, had suffered the same thing, this type of electrical process was clearly rare.

Perhaps a brain abnormality?

But then the odds of two scientists in the same small town having the same abnormality wasn't good. Also, if this was something genetic, then wouldn't Zane have shown signs of this type of seizure in the past? Nate couldn't be certain. He didn't have much more than a rudimentary understanding of human medicine and physiology. He'd been designed to analyze deep space phenomena, not the quirks of human beings.

The door to the observation lounge opened and Jack Carter walked in with a lovely, if somewhat short, woman with almond shaped brown eyes and long black hair pulled up into a severe ponytail. She was wearing a uniform similar to Jack's and a scowl.

Zane had mentioned his girlfriend, Jo Lupo, a few times that day. He'd said that she was the town Deputy and that he loved her. Nate didn't understand what love was, but if Jo was this angry looking woman then it stood to reason that she loved Zane too and that she blamed Nate for what happened to him.

"Is he okay?" Nate demanded, coming to a halt in his pacing at the center of the window. "It's been over an hour and no one has said anything at all to me..."

"He's fine, for now," Jack answered. The look on his face, though... Nate saw worry, not unlike the worry he'd seen directed at Dr. Blake, but no annoyance. This was just... worry.

"I've been going over the incident, but I cannot determine the cause of the incident," Nate said after a moment of silence. "I ruled out mechanical failure, because the SDS scanner cannot affect someone in that manner who is not connected to it. I also considered a genetic abnormality, but that would have been detected in him long ago."

"That's right," Jo accused. "He was fine before he got in there with you!"

Nate flinched in the face of her anger and Jack put a calming hand on her shoulder. "Let's just run through this one more time, okay?" Nate swallowed and nodded. "So... the spaceship lands and you come out. A few hours later, Lieber is electrocuted in his own lab and then the exact same thing happens to Zane right here, in front of you. And, if I may say, you weren't too excited about the test he was doing."

"No, I wasn't excited about the test," Nate agreed, "but I trusted him not to let me be hurt."

Jo seemed to shake with fury and Nate found that the accusation in her eyes scared him. Nate knew where this was going, but he couldn't accept it. He'd never hurt Zane.

Never.

"I don't even know who Dr. Lieber is."

"Maybe you're malfunctioning," Jo posited. "Who knows what you're capable of doing. For all we know, you don't need to be close to someone to zap them. You're the only thing that came off that ship... there's nothing else that could be responsible."

"Jo, we don't know that. What's happening could be the result of a GD project..." Jack started to object.

"But she's right," Nate interrupted. An unnatural calm seemed to depend upon him. It felt hard to breathe and suddenly everything sounded as though it were coming at him from some distance. "After my trip through space, I might be damaged in some way that I cannot sense. If that is the case, then I might be responsible for Dr. Lieber's death and Zane's condition without being aware of doing so or even intending them harm. I'm programmed for self-preservation, not aggression... but if I'm defective..."

The solution was obvious. "You should terminate me."

"What!"

"My voluntary functions should be eradicated and my data should be saved... perhaps by using liquid nitrogen and argon."

"That's what I'm talking about." Jo sounded almost eager to get started, which seemed to knock Nate out of his shock.

What was he doing? Advocating his own death? But... if he was hurting people... hurting his friend...

What else _could_ he do?

Jack pulled Jo back and stared at Nate with an unreadable stare. "Is this your way of admitting that you attacked Zane?"

"No..." nonononono... "but a man is dead and another seriously injured. Deputy Lupo presented a logical explanation. Whether through a programming error or degradation caused by my journey home... I might a serious threat. Jack..." Nate made his face remain impassive and his voice calm, though it threatened to shake. "You should terminate me," he repeated.

Nate still couldn't read the expression on Jack's face, but Jo clearly could. "Carter... are you..."

"There has to be another explanation," he snapped, interrupting Jo, and then he all but fled the lounge.

"How can you just stand there and say things like that?" Jo turned her angry, accusing eyes on Nate again.

But that was the last straw. "You think I'm responsible for the suffering of the man you love! Don't tell me you don't want me dead; you were pretty keen on the idea just moments ago." Jo flinched, but Nate didn't notice. "And what... do you think I want to die? I'm terrified.

"All I wanted for so long was to finish my mission and come home so that, finally, I wouldn't be alone. Except here I am trapped in a white-walled _cell_ where people talk to me from behind windows and suits and treat me like I'm some_thing_ instead of some_one_. Worse, I might be inadvertently responsible for harming two people, one of whomI know and like. Just what am I supposed to do?"

Jo shook, the fire leaving her eyes to be replaced by tears. "I... I'm sorry." Then she too, fled the room.

The two remaining scientists were staring at Nate in shock, so he turned around and glared at them. "Get out."

"What?"

"I said_ get out_."

"We can't just..."

"_Get out!!_" Nate watched in satisfaction as the two blue-suited men raced into the decontamination chamber and left him completely alone.

Then the fight went out of him and Nate slumped against the window behind him. He slid down until his was sitting on the floor and pulled his knees up to his chest. His breath came in a shaky, halting manner that was foreign to him as he tried to calm down, but the anger and fear wouldn't leave him. Instead his body began to tremble.

"I don't want to die," he whispered to the empty room. "I don't want to die..."

A/N - I actually loved writing this chapter. Nate feels very well defined in my mind. As for Jo, she's under a lot of stress because of Zane's condition and she wants to hate Nate, not feel sorry for him. Jack, of course, is very confused. The idea of Nate dying hits too close to home.


	5. Chapter 5

Disclaimer – I own nothing contained with this story.

Teaser – Jack would have been less surprised to see Kim walk off the spaceship than the person he actually saw. As everyone milled around him and shouted at one another, all Jack could do was stare at the body collapsed in the ship's 'door' mechanism in shock.

Pairings – pre-Jack/AI!OrganicComputer!Nate

_Chapter Five – In Which Jack's Faith is Vindicated_

A few months ago, Jack had stood by and watched Nathan Stark die. He'd been too slow on the uptake to prevent the man from sacrificing himself on what should have been the happiest day of Nathan's life. (Or, since this was the second time the he and Allison had decided to marry, perhaps it should have been tied for the happiest day.) Instead, Stark had dissolved away behind a pane of glass.

Now, behind yet another sheet of glass, Nathan Stark's doppelganger was asking to die. The irony was not lost on Jack and it made his chest twist up painfully inside.

Nate could not be responsible for what was happening. Jack didn't think he could stand by and watch that face die a second time.

He'd failed once; he wasn't about to do it again.

Then Jack froze. Nate wasn't Nathan, but he felt like the two were confusing themselves in his head. He couldn't make this about Nathan's death. That was the same mistake that Allison was making, which was crippling her judgment.

When Zane had started seizing, Allison had frozen. Jack had to yell at the techs to turn shut off the scanner while Henry had taken charge of helping Zane. She didn't react when Zane fell or when Nate caught the scientist before he hit the ground or when Nate kept telling Zane to hang on.

Jack took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. This wasn't about Stark, but it wasn't not about him either. Nathan Stark's death had left behind a lot of issues that hadn't resolved themselves yet. Without meaning to, Nate had stirred all that up just by arriving and, though it wasn't fair to Nate, there was no way to untangle Nate from Nathan yet. Things had to work out on their own.

Besides, the truth was that Stark wouldn't have wanted Nate to die because of a what if and, though he hadn't liked Jack, Stark would have trusted Jack to discover the truth. After two years of watching Jack investigate and find answers that saved lives, Nathan had finally come to respect Jack and the reverse had been true too. Time and again, Jack had seen that Nathan had genuinely wanted to save lives with science and he'd have viewed Nate as a life worth saving.

"Carter..."

Jack turned around to see Jo with tears in her eyes. Her voice was soft, the way it always got when she was worried or scared for someone else. "Jo... Jo, what happened?"

"You... you're right. It can't be Nate... it's not fair if it is... that he finally came home just to die?"

The combination of Zane's life being in danger and whatever Jack had missed when he'd left the lounge had clearly touched Jo deeper than Jack had thought possible. Yet here Jo was, tears running down her face as she struggled between anger over being helpless to do anything for Zane and new found pity for Nate. Jack was glad for her sake that the hallway was empty. Pulling his deputy – the woman who'd somehow become his second sister – into a hug, Jack let Jo cry against his shoulder where no one could see. "We're going to fix this, Josefina," he promised.

Now to figure out how.

-=-=-=

After convincing Jo to spend the rest of the day with Zane and let him deal with the rest of the investigation, Jack sought out Henry. Since Zane's seizure, Henry had been analyzing Zane's blood and Lieber's remains, searching for a connection. Henry had commandeered one of the medical labs instead of driving back to his garage, so Jack was grateful for not having to go far for advice.

"He asked you, just like that?" Henry shook his head. "Does Allison know?"

"No. I don't think anyone has told her. Jo and I certainly didn't."

"Good." Henry paused and then elaborated. "She's not thinking very clearly today and I can't even begin to guess if she'd agree to have Nate... terminated before we can even be certain he's the cause. As much as I think she resents his presence, she feels... drawn to him. Whenever I bring him up, she tries to draw comparisons between him and Nathan. She's looking for Nathan in him and... I don't know what to do for her. She won't talk about it and she won't see one of the therapists we have on staff."

"After what happened with Beverly, that isn't exactly surprising," Jack said. "Sometimes I can still get her to talk to me, but its getting less and less. Maybe..."

When Jack simply trailed off, Henry tapped him on the shoulder and said, "aloud, please?"

"Oh, sorry. I was just thinking that maybe Abby could help out. She is a pretty good psychiatrist and, the last time she was here, Allison got along with her fairly well. I just don't know how we'd get her clearance or if Allison would even let her help."

"It's worth a try," Henry concluded. "I'll be able to get Abby clearance if you can convince her to come to Eureka."

Jack nodded. "She hates leaving her patients for long, but if there's a way to get her here then I'll find it." Gesturing to the microscopes, Jack asked, "what have you found so far?"

"There's some sort of virus in Zane and Lieber that's unlike anything I've ever seen before. I've got Nate's blood over there, getting analyzed for the same virus while I work on figuring out just what it is the virus does. Until I've got more data, I can't even begin to hypothesize as to where it came from or how they contracted it."

"Well, there's not much I can do until your analysis is done," Jack said quietly. "I think... I think maybe I'll start working on getting Abby here."

"Jack, just... you don't have to save Nate because of what happened with Nathan."

"No... I don't. I have to save Nate because he's got as much of a right to life as everyone else in this town. He's a person."

"I know."

-=-=-=

Talking with Abby was, as usual, part nostalgic, part friendly, and part incredibly difficult. The reasons for their divorce still stung and they still loved each other, in their own way. It was just... Jack couldn't trust her with him after she cheated on him and she couldn't handle the danger Jack willingly put himself in. Despite that, they'd managed to chat about quite a few things before getting to what Jack was really calling about.

Abby was excited about how well Zoe was doing in school and thrilled to hear that their daughter was going to be in an upcoming play. This time it was _Hamlet_ and Zoe was Horatio. She'd actually tried out for Ophelia, but was relieved to be playing the part of a character who didn't die... the only main character, in fact, that made it through the entire play with dying somehow.

Eventually, though, Jack got around to explaining some of what was going on with Allison and how, though he couldn't say what had happened, recent events were making things harder on Allison than ever. Abby had agreed to come down on that weekend and see for herself how Allison was doing. If she agreed with Jack's assessment then Abby would consider what to do from there. Abby remembered Allison fondly, as well as Nathan, and persuading her to help hadn't been as hard as Jack had feared.

After the call, Jack tracked down Allison in the GD lobby.

"How's the investigation going?" Allison asked before Jack could ask how she was doing.

"I'm waiting for results from Henry," Jack said.

"Jack! Allison!"

"Speak of the devil," Jack muttered in amusement.

"I just got the last of the test results back. As I was telling Jack earlier, there seems to be a virus in both Zane and Lieber which caused the electrocutions."

"Wait..." Allison's eyes widened. "What kind of virus could cause this kind of electrical disturbance?"

"Well, just think about it." Henry sounded excited, if wary, as he described the virus. "It does so much reproduce itself as it backs itself up, creating identical copies of itself over and over again without mutation." Jack's eyes widened as an idea began to form in his mind.

"Every living thing mutates," Allison objected. "That's how nature works."

"Well, is it possible, then, that this isn't from nature?" Jack asked. "All this talk of electricity and backups and overloads... I mean it sounds like you're talking about a computer virus."

"That's exactly right. A biological organism encoded with binary information instead of DNA and we have no defense against it." Henry was definitely worried looking now. "And we still don't know how it jumps from computer to living person."

"Well, you already said it. It came from an organic computer." Allison's face closed off. "That thing in our lab is responsible. We should shut it down, now, before anyone else gets sick."

"Nate has been under full bio-containment protocols since he arrived," Henry said gently. "Also, I've already examined him. There's no trace of the virus in his system; this didn't originate from him."

"What? That's impossible, Henry. Only one organic computer walked off that ship."

"True... but there is another one still on board." Jack put a hand on Allison's shoulder. "Zane linked his organic computer to the one on the ship; if the source of the virus is the computer still on the Columbus, then it must have got out through the connection to Zane's computer and jumped from the computer to Zane."

"And, since Zane's computer is on the network, it got into the other organic computers in Eureka. Lieber had one, which would explain how he got sick." Henry nodded, "we should check the on board computer to be sure, but this seems to be the explanation that fits best."

Jack nodded and, together, they raced to the lab where the ship was being kept and hurried, as safely as possible, to get into the hazmat suits. As they were changing, Jack thought about the last time he'd been in these. Henry had put GD into lock down over a fake bio-hazard and Jack, along with Stark and Taggart, had tramped around the building in the blue suits in hopes of finding survivors and, more likely, a path to Allison, Henry, Beverly, and Kevin who were trapped at the bottom of a very, very long ladder.

Truth was, that times like these were the only times that Jack could ever really stand Stark. Things had gone bad and were getting worse and Nathan would refrain from doling out the worst of his sarcasm. Jack, Jo, and Henry would investigate what went wrong; Henry, Stark, and Allison would find a way to fix things; Jack and Stark would implement the fix. Zane had jokingly called Jack, Stark, and Henry Eureka's 'dream team', but he'd had a point. The three of them had the most involvement in keeping the town from falling apart. With Stark dead, Zane had stepped up to fill Nathan's shoes.

Suddenly Jack wondered if Zane even realized that he'd become the new third member of the 'dream team'. During the incident with the second sun, Zane had been invaluable. Jack was fairly certain he'd told Zane that he'd done good, but Jack couldn't be certain. Well... he'd just have to make sure that Zane lived through this so that the next time they had to use the 'dream team' routine Zane could get the recognition he deserved.

By the time Jack was done with his musing on the subject, both he and Henry were in the blue bio-containment suits and Tess had joined them in a suit of her own. The three of them went into the hanger bay style lab as a mechanized voice announced "Decontamination Complete".

The only sounds for the next fifteen or so minutes was from Henry as he directed Jack and Tess in how to help him remove the computer from the ship. Then the three of them carried the computer out of the hanger and into an adjoining lab, which had been sealed against contamination.

"That's heavy," Jack panted as they dropped the computer's weighty case onto the lab table.

Henry picked up a hand held scanning device as Tess pulled open the box to expose the internal computer. "It's the motherboard from the ship's organic computer."

"Or what's left of it," Tess said, flinging her hands up in disgust.

The computer inside definitely looked fried. It reminded Jack a little of something out of _Star Trek:Voyager_, which he used to watch when he had the time. There was one species that had gone by a numerical designation only... 8564 or 8532 or 8572, something like that. Jack remembered that their ships had been entirely made out of organic parts...

"The entire biological matrix has been burned out... overloaded," Tess continued to complain was Henry's device coaxed a little life out of the readout display.

"Yeah... that looks like exactly the same thing that happened to Dr. Lieber," Jack said, pretending that Tess had been making an observation and not whining.

"It's got the virus." Henry sounded relieved. Jack certainly knew he was; this meant Nate was off the hook. "We've definitely found the source."

"So I was right about it transferring through Zane's organic computer?" Jack clarified.

"Without a doubt."

Tess was looking very worried, however. "We need to quarantine all the organic computers in Eureka and start checking everyone who's used one since the Zane first connected his computer to the ship."

"How many organic computers are there?" They couldn't exactly be common. Jack hadn't encountered them before and he'd been all over GD...

"There are 25 in use at GD, so that's..." Henry faced Jack, a look of fear in his eyes. "200 people."

"200 people..." Jack echoed.

"We've got a potential epidemic on our hands."

Well... at least Tess wasn't complaining anymore.

-=-=-=

Allison walked up to where Tess and Jack were standing. There was a tablet computer in her hands and she was bringing with her, hopefully, an update on how things were progressing. Zane was looking pale on his bed and Jo was gripping his hand as he slept. Her eyes were glassy, but she likely hadn't cried since that brief breakdown in the hall earlier.

Jo deserved good news...

"Well, the virus is causing Zane's neural electrical charge to build up. I'd say, two hours until he has another seizure," Allison began without preamble. Jack felt his chest tighten as he glanced over at Jo. He couldn't even begin to imagine how she was dealing with this... "This time, I don't know if we'll be able to stop it."

Allison paused and took a deep breath, glancing around at the full, and very busy, infirmary. "So, is this all of them?"

"Uh... yeah. Yeah, it's everyone who had an organic computer." Jack tore his eyes away from Jo and Zane. There had to be a way to fix this; they just hadn't thought of it yet.

"Yeah, we quarantined all the computers. So far we've detected symptoms in sixty-nine people." Tess had crossed her arms tightly around her chest. She'd likely never dealt with anything like this before. If she intended to stay in Eureka, she needed to get used to working under the pressure of a science-caused death threat.

"Now, does that mean all of them are going to get sick?" He was fairly certain the answer was yes, but Jack needed to hear it.

"Well, like with any virus, we have to assume that some will be affected more than others." Allison looked exhausted. Jack wished she'd left when she'd promised. Someone who wasn't pregnant and already overstressed should have been handling this... fiasco. "But the more they get hit, the harder time we're going to have suppressing the symptoms."

"Now what happens when... uh, if people without organic computers get sick?" In this town, it was all too likely that the virus would be contagious in humans.

"If transmission only occurs with direct contact with the computer than there's no reason to believe that's going to happen," Allison said calmly.

Jack could hear the sound of the nearby monitor spazzing out and glanced down just in time to see electricity spark off his hand to hit the metal desk lamp beside him. "Other than this..." Jack looked up into Allison's eyes, but all he saw was sheer terror. He remembered what she'd told him when he'd used the vest that had put him out of phase with the rest of the world. Allison had said that she couldn't lose him, too.

This was very, very bad.

Immediately, Jack and Allison tracked down Henry, who was headed for Nate's lab.

"We're all infected," he told them once Jack explained what had happened. Allison was mute, though. "The virus is jumping from human to human via touch, using our own electrical impulses." Allison didn't respond, though she walked beside him and Jack. "We should instigate a level one lock down," Henry suggested gently.

Allison merely nodded.

"All entrances to the town will be sealed," Jack agreed. "I've already got security on it."

"Good." Henry watched Allison closely. "The safest thing for everyone already here is to stay indoors."

"Will that keep them from getting it?"

"I don't know. This is a new type of infection, Jack. There's just so much we don't know about it that I don't even know where to begin the search for a cure." Henry handed Jack one of the tablet computers he was holding. "I've developed a crude test; the infection rate is already climbing."

"How long do we have?"

"Well, based on the time line for Zane and Lieber, in twelve hours you won't be able to find anyone who isn't infected."

"Twelve..." Jack breathed, the word barely audible. Then he stopped and tapped Henry's elbow to stop him, too. Allison simply came to a stop and hovered by Jack's shoulder. "What about Nate?" Allison visibly flinched. "I mean, you tested him, right? You said he wasn't the source. So... that means he's immune. Right?"

"Maybe... well," Henry started to brighten. "Probably. The original computer could have written some sort of immunity into it's code to protect him. He could be our answer."

"I'm going to get someone to look after Allison," Jack said, but she shook her head sharply and finally spoke.

"No, I'm fine." Seeing the doubt on both Jack and Henry's faces, she repeated more forcefully, "I'm fine. Really."

Jack sighed and then moved to stand directly in front of her. He placed his hands on her shoulders and gave them a squeeze. "Look... there's nothing you can do right now. Why don't you head up to your office and go lay down for awhile?"

Seeing the resolve in Jack's eyes, Allison nodded. "All right. I'll go do that."

Once she was gone, Jack turned to Henry. "She needs to be put on medical leave."

"Well... if we survive the night, that's exactly what's going to happen."

A/N - Already, you can see that my redux for the next episode will be quite different plot-wise. Abby is going to show up and Allison is going to be forced onto sick leave. Allie isn't going to be a happy camper...


	6. Chapter 6

Disclaimer – I own nothing contained with this story.

Teaser – Jack would have been less surprised to see Kim walk off the spaceship than the person he actually saw. As everyone milled around him and shouted at one another, all Jack could do was stare at the body collapsed in the ship's 'door' mechanism in shock.

Pairings – pre-Jack/AI!OrganicComputer!Nate

_Chapter Six – In Which the Conflict of Ownership Versus Morality is Not Debated_

Nate looked up as Henry walked into the lab... sans blue bio-suit.

"You're breaking the containment protocols... does this mean I'm not the source of the problem?" Nate asked as he quickly stood up from where he'd been sitting for the past two hours. His legs were stiff from staying in place for so long and he stumbled for a moment at the alien sensation of pins and needles.

"Are you alright?" Henry steadied Nate, who nodded emphatically. "You aren't the source of the virus," Henry then confirmed. "The original computer from the Columbus, however, is."

"Are you sure? Deputy Lupo's argument was both logical and compelling."

"We're sure. Right now... we need your help."

Nate smiled. "Of course. I'll do whatever I can to help."

"I believe there are antibodies in your cells that can save those of us already infected."

"Will you be needing more blood samples?" Nate hoped not. Giving blood _hurt_.

"Actually, I think we should work together. Come with me." Henry started walking towards the door.

Nate followed him, but paused a moment in the doorway as, for a moment, he felt afraid. The world out there was so much bigger than anything he was used to...

-=-=-=

Nate felt amazed at the size of GD. He'd known it was big, but then he'd been living inside a ship with only enough room for himself to lay down or sit up for the majority of his life. To him, the room he'd been in since arrival was an inordinately large space.

Drawing on the walls had been fun, though. The scientists in the blue suits had tried to stop him at first but apparently they were afraid of his glare. Or, more likely, they'd been trained by Nathan Stark to cower under the force of Stark's glare, which meant that there were definite advantages to looking like this particular dead man.

Henry had collected Dr. Blake, Tess, and Jack together in what Nate assumed was some sort of conference room. Nate was too busy window watching to pay too much attention as Henry explained to everybody else what they'd discovered. There were just so many people wandering around. Not even when they were using the SDS scanner on him had Nate seen this many people. It was amazing.

"Yes... we have."

Nate took that as his cue to stop gawking at the scientists of GD and go over to the small crowd.

"Great," Jack said in relief. "What'cha got? Booster shots? A patch?" He moved his hand only to receive a pretty large shock. "Ow! That's getting old."

"Yeah, it's not going to be that easy," Tess explained. "There's a big difference between our immune system and that of an organic computer. Traditional methods of immunization just aren't going to work."

"Well, uh, what about Zane's, um..." Jack gestured with his hands again, which Nate couldn't help but watch. "The, uh, goo thing. It was attached to the ship. He said it used light?"

Nate was nodding. This could work. "The human optic system is a lot like that of a computer. It's a light-based information transfer system. Using the correct frequency, we could easily download the cure into everyone in the entire town simultaneously."

"Well, hold on," Tess objected. "That's a lot of power. We would need thirty to forty petavolts per byte of distributed information."

"That's the output of the North American power grid for an entire year," Allison told Jack when he looked at her askance. "We've got maybe ten hours." She turned her attention to Henry and Tess, ignoring Nate. "Suggestions?"

"Well, we have fusion cells in chemical storage, but that'll take days to get out of storage." Henry looked dejected.

Tess brightened. "Antimatter generator."

"The prototype isn't ready," Allison shot down the suggestion. Tess frowned again.

"What about plasma? That's good for big, high energy, bursts of power, right?" The three scientists stared at Jack in shock and his expression grew defensive. "_What?_ I pay attention."

"Plasma might do it," Allison agreed slowly, "but we don't have the components to build one anywhere near big enough."

"That's not true," Nate objected. "The one built to cushion my space jump would generate more than enough energy for this. All that needs to be done is collect all the junk and turn it back into something useful."

Jack snorted with amusement. "I'm going to need that blender back."

-=-=-=

It was chaos, but in a good way. Nate found he rather liked all the hustle. Everyone kept deferring to him about where all the toasters, blenders, kitchen sinks, and lawn sprinklers should go. While many stared in shock at first, they were all kind enough to call him Nate once he told them that he wasn't Nathan Stark and didn't wish to be referred to by either name.

It had taken hours and both Henry and Jack had urged Dr. Blake to go home several times. She kept promising to take the next few days off, but it was clearly not enough for the two men. Nate thought she ought to at least lay down. She appeared pale to his eyes and seemed somewhat unsteady on her feet.

But now everything had been reassembled and Nate felt a moment of pride that he could take all of these normal, everyday things and turn them into something extraordinary. Or, at least most were ordinary things. There were a few resonance couplers and boost converters and other not so average things, but the majority was created from appliances found in the kitchen or the back yard.

"We relaid the immunization data into a pulse generator at five hundred ten nanometers," Henry said as Nate walked up. He was likely answering a question, so Nate stayed quiet.

"Green light," Tess added.

"Got it; thank you," Jack muttered.

"I've alerted all departments to shield their optical equipment," Allison told Henry.

"What about our optical equipment?" Jack gestured towards his eyes.

"This wavelength won't cause ocular damage," Allison assured him. "It should only affect the virus."

That wasn't strictly true. It would cause their immune system to create new antibodies under the command of the subconscious part of the brain, which would be receiving the instructions to do so from the light. Nate considered saying this aloud, but refrained. Dr. Blake's response was adequate, if fallacious.

"Here's hoping," Jack said.

"All right, here we go," Henry raised his voice, pitching it so that everyone in the room could hear.

The plasma generator started powering up and Nate grinned in anticipation. He hadn't gotten to see it work the last time it booted up.

"Sixty percent," Henry announced. "Seventy..."

"Henry? It's powering down." Tess frowned at her screen.

Nate peered over Tess' shoulder. Forty-four percent... thirty-three... "We got everything back, right? If we're so much as missing a sink, this won't work properly."

Jack started to object and then turned to Fargo, who was wearing a guilty expression. "Are you kidding me!"

Fargo winced and then darted over to retrieve a collection of circuit boards from under one of the tables. Taking a better look, Nate recognized it as a boost converter.

"What happened to respect for personal property?" Fargo asked halfheartedly.

Tess looked like she wanted to throttle Fargo. "What happened to trying to save people's lives?"

"Better late than never?" Fargo quipped as Tess snatched away the converter and handed it over to Henry. He jogged over to place it in the proper 'tower'.

From behind Fargo, Nate put his hands on the scientist's shoulders and squeezed a little. Leaning over, he said, "you're lucky I'm not programmed for aggression, or I'd smack you right now." He released Fargo's shoulders and patted the right one a bit harder than necessary.

"He has some... good qualities," Nate heard Allison tell Tess.

Jack just snickered and grinned at Nate.

"Okay..." Allison paused as Henry retook his place behind the computer. "Are we ready to try this again?"

"Cross your fingers," Henry joked and then switched the generator on again.

This time Henry counted upwards with no problem. The plasma generator reached one hundred percent and instantly the entire town of Eureka was suffused in a gentle green glow.

In spite of having been excited to see the generator work, Nate found that he couldn't take his eyes off of Jack. He looked... amazing.

Absolutely amazing...

_Epilogue – In Which There are Meteors_

Nate had seen meteors before through the use of the Columbus' sensors, but they'd never looked this beautiful. Or, perhaps, he hadn't been human enough at the time to appreciate the beauty.

A day had passed since the virus had been dealt with. Henry had given Nate some new clothes to wear; it was nice to have something other than the white jumpsuit to wear. He still had on the shoes he'd come off the ship with, but now Nate had a pair of comfortable jeans, a black t-shirt, and a long-sleeved, navy button down.

Then Jack had shown up, about half an hour before sun-down, and convinced Henry to let him take Nate away from GD for a little while. Nate had been curious about everything to do with Jack's car and the Sheriff had answered his questions in amusement.

Nate had also watched the sunset through the trees. He'd never seen one before; it was gorgeous. There were pinks and oranges and russets... the sun's rays cut through the clouds and seemed to sparkle...

They reached a clearing well after everything grew dark and Jack had them clamber on top of the hood of the car. Nate asked what they were waiting for, but Jack pointed up at the sky. That was when the meteors began burning across the sky.

"I know you've probably seen stuff in space that's a lot more amazing than this, but I thought you'd appreciate getting to see the meteor shower from a new perspective."

Nate grinned and bumped his shoulders lightly against Jack's. "Thank you." He couldn't have asked for anything better than this.

A/N - So, onward to the next episode. I should have it done fairly soon and will start posting as soon as I've finished it. Unanswered questions from this story will be answered in the next one. Nate will continue to be adorable. :)

This story feels, to me anyway, like its the best I've written so far and I really appreciate all the feedback I've gotten on it. I get this warm, fuzzy feeling every time I check my inbox and see everything from reviews to story alerts/favorites. It's good to know that people enjoyed reading this as much as I did writing it.


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